Angry old white man

THE EDITOR, Madam:

On December 31, the final day of the last decade, Pope Francis was filmed slapping the hand of a lady who reached out to hold his hand during a meet-and-greet-the-faithful ritual in the Vatican.

Maybe Papa Francisco figured he’d done enough meeting and greeting, but his slap brought global headlines that he acted like an ‘angry old white man’ towards the lady of Oriental descent.

There was an apology forthcoming the next day, with the Pontiff, no doubt, reminded by the directors of the Vatican Bank – conveniently named the Institute For The Works Of Religion – that even he cannot get away with biting (or slapping) the hand that feeds you.

That terminology of ‘angry old white man’ has entered the letters pages quite frequently in recent times, and is usually directed against anyone whose opinion about climate change does not completely agree with the gloom-and-doom hysteria and extinction scenarios laid out by some of our society’s youngsters.

Many moons ago, long before climate change became a topic, a pal figured my personality deserved a triple-A rating. That sounds great in the sports world, but he’d nailed my proudly politically incorrect persona as an ‘antagonistic anarchistic agnostic’.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

All these decades later, I’m now called an angry old white man by more than one social-justice warrior because my opinion is not exactly in line with theirs. There’s no middle ground; apparently, it’s their way or the highway, even if their name-calling is ageist, racist, and sexist, but who cares about that.

So now I find myself compared with the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion followers, as an angry old white man.

William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest that misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows, but it feels more than strange to be sharing a bed with the Bishop Of Rome. The Roaring Twenties version 2.0 is off to a great start.

BERNIE SMITH

Canada